Sunday, June 08, 2014

7am: I am lounging in my pj's on the couch in the front garden with my journal, the dogs and pot of coffee, and all the neighbors drive pass and beep. They all have their weed whackers. It's Maberga road cleaning day. Fuck.

7:05: I am still sitting in garden, still in pjs, contemplating how rude I am relaxing whilst others are working.

NOTE: Maberga Road cleaning means that any able bodied person (man) with a weed whacker meets at the gate at the bottom of the road (obviously much earlier than 7am) to cut back the nature that makes a very small road even smaller. Being someone without the ability to use a weed whacker I am useless. Having seen Italians sweep after they weed whack, I thought, well, I have a role.

9.15: sweeping like my life depends on it and trying to catch up with the noise of the weed whacking neighbors ahead of me, I contemplate why they are working UP the road instead of DOWN. It seems obvious in my mind that shit goes down hill, so why aren't we. Another example of Italian inefficiency. I run up the road a ways to work down hill.

9:16: I give a mental apology to my wise Italian neighbors while by back seizes from leaning down hill to sweep. I turn around and begin working my way back UP the hill with my broom.

10:15: I arrive at neighbor Franco's house. Yes, to those of you who've been here, his house is about 100 yards from my own, where I started....3 hours earlier. I meet Franco and Augusto, who apparently are the only able bodied men with weed whackers.

10:16: I try to defend the usefulness of my last 3 sweaty, dirty, exhausting, back-seizing hours, whilst Franco and Augusto explain to me that the wind will do what I've been doing....with a lot less effort.

10:17: I am sitting on Franco's patio with a plastic cup filled with bubbly white wine, chatting about the nature of nature and how it just keeps growing, while Franco's wife Lisa is taking fresh bread out of their wood oven.

10:45: Franco and Lisa's lunch guests arrive so Augusto and I take our leave. I still have a bit of sweeping to do. Augusto laughs at me and tells me to get in his truck for a ride back to my house because a. I must be tired and b. I don't need to do any more sweeping 'cause the wind can do my work with less effort.

10.46: Augusto and I are drinking another fizzy white drink (from a can) and discussing David and my "house project 2014" which is cutting a window in the kitchen. He talks me out of doing it and then leaves to have lunch with his wife.

11:30: I'm back on the couch, this time in the living room for a nap that is obligatory when one is drinking fizzy alcoholic drinks before noon and doing back breaking physical labor (yes, sweeping) in the 85 degree weather.

2:30 - 5:00: And I am sitting at my sewing machine working on my newest project which is a fabric patchwork mosaic that looks something like this

and contemplating that being an artist is a lot better job than being a street sweeper.

5:00 -7:00 Is for weeding the orto, specifically David's hatch chili peppers because David will be home on Friday and their maintenance is, well, rather important.

7:15 Bubble bath... where I contemplate whether I like drinking bubbles or floating in them better. Floating wins. I put on my pjs.

7.20: I start dinner.

7:22: Water boiling on the stove, NPR on the computer, the power goes out.

7:22:05: I switch the breakers (is that the right terminology? probably not...anyway, I check that I haven't just jump something) then I call Lina. I don't know why but I like her to know when something goes wrong at my house.

7:23 While talking to Lina my phone dies, dead battery.

7:40: I sit down to dinner, contemplating why the power has gone out, whether it is likely to come back on, why I don't regularly charge my cell phone and if I'll need to pass a night here with no means of communication and light only from candles.

7:41: I freak out, a little.

7:42: I'm in the car driving to Badalucco to go to my friends' bar to charge my phone. Still in my pjs but with a sweatshirt overtop.

8:00: My friends bar is closed.

8:20: I arrive at the only open bar in Taggia, order a prosecco and some electricity to charge my phone.

8:20 - 9:00: With my phone pugged into the wall, I watch the nightlife of Taggia which consists of all men, mostly from Eastern European countries, drinking coffee and fizzy white drinks. The bar tender orders a pizza and offers me some. I decline having eaten a bowl of chips that came with my prosecco. I leave and offer him a tip. He declines, with a smile.

9:15: I arrive home and find every light in the house on and all the zucchini I picked from the orto and foolishly left on the counter gone. Ruffino smiles.

Friday, June 06, 2014

Going up to the land where our orto is, we have to walk through the neighbor's yard. It's just the way it works around here. I'd like to say he doesn't mind, but he probably does. It doesn't matter either way since going through his land is the only way for us to get to ours. We've got legal rights. Anyway....to go from here (our house)

to here (our orto)

We have to go through here (the neighbor's land)

I don't really suffer from obsessive compulsive personality disorder. Ok, well, before I leave the house for an extended period of time (like trips to the US, or .... say....running to the store for milk)I run from the car back into the house 10 times to make sure the gas is off, and there is no fire left burning in the wood stove (no matter when the last fire had been lit), and the gate is close with the dogs inside. Yeah, ok so I do that but it seems like an insult to people who actually do suffer from OCPD to say that that qualifies me.

Having said that, I would kind of like to have OCPD. I would really like to be bothered by the dog hair on my floor. I would love to be bothered by the mould growing across most walls in my house. I would really really like to be bothered that all our things official are collected in folders with very specific labels like "important stuff 2006-2013".

Actually, I AM bothered by these things....just not enough to do anything about then. I'm totally bothered by them, but not, say, as much as someone who will be kept awake all night tonight thinking about that horrible list of disorder that he can do nothing about (yes, I am referring to someone in particular....no names...you know who you are). I suspect that there are shades of OCPD and that I probably fall in the smokey grey area.

I am an OCPD wanna be. Actually, I blame Martha Stewart..but I digress.....

So, passing through the neighbor's yard, going to our orto I see this......

Oh my god. Are those the tidiest, most non-weed filled, straight rows of tomatoes with little crested walls to keep the water in that you've ever seen?

Check out his peppers

And his...whatever this is

Our neighbor also happens to be the 8 fingered carpenter who has made all our doors and windows He'd probably like to be more OCPD than he is...given his lack of a couple of fingers but I personally like his dark charcoal grey level of perfectionism. We don't have leaks in the house (at least not with the work he's done). But as a colleague in the care of ortos.....

I'm fucked.

Cornwell orto 2014

Having said that, the scrappy Cornwell's do actually have fruit growing in ours